Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy

Welcome to Day 106 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom.

Life is Like Starring in a Movie

Thank you for joining us for our 7 day a week, 7 minutes of wisdom podcast. This is Day 106 of our Trek. Yesterday we enjoyed some humble pie while we explored the reasoning why all trails eventually end, specifically the trails of success and failure. Today we will investigate why life is like starring in a movie.

In celebration of our 100th day of our Wisdom-Trek, please check out Wisdom-Trek.com and sign up for our drawing for a free Wisdom-Trek t-shirt that will take place on October 5th.

We are recording our podcast from our studio at Home2 in Charlotte, North Carolina.  After speaking at Putnam Church this morning, we headed back south. We stopped by Cracker Barrel for lunch with our friends from Charlotte, Bev and Katie, who came up for a short visit during the Marietta Sternwheel Festival. The fireworks last night at the Sternwheel Festival were spectacular, and the displays that we launched from the bridge over the Ohio River made it extra special.

We made a stop in Covington, Virginia, on our way back to Charlotte to pick up Mom Jarvis. She was able to spend the past three weeks with Paula’s sister Lois to see the grandkids and great grandkids who came in for a Labor Day weekend get-together. Time spent with family and friends during this trek of life is so important. We need to make sure that we never become so busy living life that we forget this.

As we break camp and head up the trail today, let us ponder how important making the most of every moment really is. On our hike today we come across an outdoor theater, and we discuss if our lives were a movie, what would they be like.

Each of us is the screenwriter, director, and leading character in our movie of life. Our family, friends, associates, and everyone with whom we come in contact are cast members in our movie. Some of these people will be our co-stars and supporting actors while others will just be walk-ons.

The important concept to grasp is that there are no practice days, and there is no dress rehearsal.  Each day is an impromptu performance. Once we understand this, it may help us to perform at our best. With all impromptu performances, we must realize that we will miss ques, flub up lines, and draw cheers and boos from those watching our performance. We won’t perform perfectly every day, but the show must go on...

All too often we get so consumed with our "star role" that we lose site of the importance of our overall, lifelong movie and the crucial role that all the supporting cast members play. We miss the things that really matter in life. Before we know it, the seconds have become minutes, the days have become weeks, and the months have become years. And, when we finally take time to catch our breath, we look back in retrospect and think, “My performance is nearing the end, where did all the time go?”

It’s so easy to be blinded by our own performance, ambition, power, and success that we miss including the simple pleasures of life into our script. For example, did your children’s birthday parties, Little League games, or dance recitals make it into your movie? Did you include the scenes where you were available to counsel your friend in need? Did you make the time to help your kids with their homework, to attend back-to-school nights, or to put down your newspaper/telephone/iPad when your family wanted to tell you about their day?

Or, were there more important plot lines that you included in your movie of life?

Now, I realize that your movie includes hectic scenes of life and that you’re getting pulled in a milli...